AKA The Life of Marty Deeks abridged
by radcgg
Summary: A look at Marty Deek's life and times to date.


Title: A.K.A. (or the life of Marty Deeks abridged)  
>Pairing: Deeks, DeeksKensi (ish)  
>Rating: PG<br>Disclaimer: I don't own NCIS: Los Angeles for some reason that continues to allude me.  
>Summary: A look at Marty Deek's life and times to date<br>AN: **earnmysong**, I tried to write in past tense which is something I don't do very often (read: at all) so let me know if you find mistakes. I kinda like this one. :D

His name wasn't always Marty Deeks. Sometimes it was Sully, others Tim. His license, the one he uses when he sleeps in his own bed at his own loft, says Martin, but no one ever calls him that. Never has.

Not even his mother. The woman who gave birth to him, then left five years later on a sunny Saturday afternoon.

"I'm just going to get some milk from the store," She'd told Marty, but she never came back. After a few years, it didn't matter to Marty whether she had run away from him or his father. He blamed her just the same.

His father, never dad or daddy, pointed a shot gun at him six years to the day she left them. He screamed at the petrified little boy in front of him that everything that had gone wrong in his life since that day was all Marty's fault.

"I'm going to make sure that you stop making trouble for good, boy," his father had slurred seconds before eleven year old Marty picked up the .22 his dad hid in the liquor cabinet and fired what would be the first of many future shots.

He'd lived with his aunt in Encino after that. A loving woman who had always told him how special he was and made sure to tape all of his math tests with bright red A's on the refrigerator door. She let Marty change his name. He didn't want to be known as Brandell anymore, wanted a new life away from that memory, and she was happy to provide it.

She was the best thing that ever happened to him.

It was in her house that he learned to love.

She died his first year of college. He paid for her funeral, and her life insurance paid for law school. Sometimes he wondered if he would have stayed in school at all if she hadn't died. She would have been proud of Marty whether he was working at the local In-N-Out Burger or Kleinfield, Carter & Associates.

He was a junior associate at the firm for less than a year when he realized that he was batting for the wrong team and applied to work for the LAPD.

He was a natural at subterfuge, so making his way to undercover was a bit of a no-brainer. Marty Deeks had been lying and selling the lie all of his life.

Still after four years of solid ops, living a solitary life, he was unprepared for meeting the NCIS Office of Special Projects A-Team. They were obviously a very tight unit. Callen, the leader and brains, Sam Hanna, the muscle, and then Kensi.

He didn't really know what to make of her. And that was not a comfortable thing for him to admit. He'd always been really good with women. It was easy for him to turn on the charm, throw them a little half smile, and nine times out of ten they were eating up any story he wanted to weave for them.

But Kensi was after more than that. She would smirk and flirt back, always ready with a quip for him. He felt strangely off-balance around her. Like she was bound to challenge him on absolutely everything, and as time went on, he found himself wishing for the opportunity.

Hetty took his signature and he worked one case. He didn't necessarily feel at home or even at ease, but it was nice to know that he had a team to back him every step of the way. That he had people to protect him and he was responsible for protecting.

But then he got the call from Traynor about Ortega. And that was it.

###

His name was Dale Sully, a young lawyer who made some questionable decisions. He knew real-estate enough to be able to set up the safe houses for Ortega and his partner. He had no morals. Didn't need them with all the money Emilio Ortega was paying him.

He met with Jess Traynor once a week normally. Jess was the only real thing in his life, the only link he had to Marty Deeks. He needed her. Absolutely. In a world of lies and deceit, she kept him grounded to who he actually was, not just the man he needed to be in order to get Lazik.

He'd been under for four months, and Sully was bone tired, almost ready to give up the op and return to his real life and a team that he wasn't quite a part of yet, but wanted to be. But the pieces were finally coming together. Lazik was coming to town and the first shipment of the product was due in two weeks. His last visit with Traynor, they had both decided to give the op three more weeks. Three weeks and they would pull up stakes. Deeks knew how hard that decision had been for her because of Christina. Just a girl who had been abducted and found dead a year and a half later. A girl who had first-hand experience with the perils of human trafficking.

"Sí. I'll see you tomorrow." Emilio said into the phone before hanging it up. Deeks could tell that Ortega was on edge, preparing for battle, but Sully had to remain objective. "That bastardo is in town and he thinks that he can take my money from me." Emilio threw his hands up in the air and shook them out, anger running out via his fingertips. Deeks kept it together. "Come."

The four of them, two body guards, Ortega, and Deeks got into his car, not knowing where they were going. The radio played some Tejano music, and even though Marty Deeks spoke fluent Spanish, Dale Sully had no idea what was going on.

One of the bodyguards pressed the security gate button, but the gate didn't move. Sully hopped out of the car saying, "I'll get it." He ran up to press the code into the box by the fence and just as he was about to press the pound key, he fell forward onto the hard pavement, burning against his back and the loud ringing of an explosion in his ears.

He couldn't see, or hear anything but fire. It surrounded him. Then there was nothing.

###

He woke up, a day later with almost no recollection of what had happened and a back that was bound to scar either from the fire or the car.

His first phone call was to Traynor. The ringing in the phone constant, never ending, adding to the dread already in his stomach.

So he dialled the only other person he could think of.

###

He buried Dale John Sully with four sharp punches to Frank Scarli's stomach. The case was closed. The job was over.

But it wasn't.

Sam pretty much gave his blessing. Callen saved him from doing worse damage than he already had. They had his back, even if they didn't know him, or approve of his position. It didn't matter. They were a team.

And then there was Kensi. She looked at him like for that moment – when Frank Scarli's gun was pressed heavy in his hand and hard against Frank's chest – that he was a monster. Like she couldn't believe that he would be capable of pulling the trigger and avenging the life of his partner and friend.

But she had been the one to get through to him, the voice he heard through the haze of rage.  
>And her hand pressed lightly against his shirt, no pressure at all on his skin, was the only thing keeping him from going back to Scarli and punching him again and again until the pain stopped.<p>

He walked away from her, ran his hands through his hair, trying to get rid of some of the emotion.

Traynor was dead, and he wasn't there to protect her, like Kensi had been there to protect him. Nothing could bring her back. He looked at Kensi, studying her hard for just a few seconds. She was nothing like Jess. She hardly knew him at all, and yet with just the subtle movement of her head Deeks knew that she wanted to help him. She would be there to listen if he wanted to talk about it.

So he left her there in the parking lot, because it was too soon for him and if she kept looking at him, he'd want to tell her everything.

###

She always called him Deeks, never Marty. He didn't mind. Marty was the name his mother had given him, and Deeks was one that actually meant something.

They played off each other undercover and in the office. They might not have had unconditional trust right away, but he knew without a doubt that when he needed her, she would be there, willingly or not. And in the beginning that was enough.

They pretended to be a couple, and he lied and said she wasn't his type at all. They pretended to be family, loving brother and sister. Manager and talent. But it never really felt real until the kid.

Until he'd taken a leap of faith and held out his gun and his trust. She hadn't taken it that day, but the point hadn't been for her to accept, just for him to give.

###

Then came the Russians.

He had been Marty Deeks then. And for those moments at the stadium, he felt like he couldn't breathe at all, his chest unnaturally tight for reasons he couldn't understand. Where she had to put her faith in him entirely, all based on something he'd read in a book. Then she'd put her hands in his, sweaty palms rubbing together and gripping tightly.

"Are you sure," she asked, as he'd watched a bead of sweat drip down from her neck, absorbed into the fabric of her shirt.

"No," he said without hesitation. They were going to do this together. Counting to three together, they jumped, away from the sensors, lasers designed to end them both.

The skin of his face tightened from the heat of the blast as they flew backwards onto the hard cement together. And in that blind moment, with her body pressing hard into his, her arms wrapped around him, his gaze dropped to her mouth. She trembled with adrenaline, his hand ran through her hair pushing it back, but he kept watching her mouth, hypnotized by the break of the smile on her lips.

"Deeks, what's your status?" Callen asks over their comms.

"We're good," he calls back. Kensi dropped her head down to his shoulder and he held her there firmly, fingertips pressing deep into the muscles of her back, unconsciously massaging out the muscles there.

###

She told a complete stranger about Jack, not him. He'd be lying if he said that didn't hurt a little. He'd also be lying if he said he didn't understand why she'd done it.

###

Later that same case, with a tub of ice cream and an assortment of beer in a plastic bag, he saw Talbot throw Kensi down on the motel room floor. He stood over her with her own gun pointed at her body, and Deeks didn't even think, just pulled out his gun and fired. He saved her life, but the only thing he could think was that she had almost died again.

And he wasn't there to protect her again.

When she woke up with a joke at his expense, all he felt was relief.

###

He got sloppy and shot. With her sitting beside his hospital bed after Vakar had been killed, he told her about his father. She ate his jello and listened as the whole night came out in extraordinarily clear detail for something that had happened almost twenty years earlier.

The memory smelled like Jim Beam, smoke, and gun powder. He felt the sting of the slap across his cheek as clearly as if the whole even was happening again, right now. He told her about how the gun hadn't seemed heavy in his hand until his father was on the ground, clutching his chest. How the sound of the shot gun clattering to the floor made him drop the .22 and run as far and fast as he could.

How the police had taken him into the precinct and he'd relived the moment over and over, while the detectives asked the same questions time after time.

When it was all over, Kensi looked at him closely, like she was studying him. Then she scooped out a spoon of green jell-o and pressed it to his lips. He let the sweet and bitter combination of the lime rest on his tongue for just a second before swallowing it down. It was the first jell-o he'd eaten since being in the hospital. Maybe the only jell-o.

She finished off the cup, then grabbed his hand with both of hers and squeezed. She didn't say anything more than that.

It was only after the mess with King that he really let himself think about all of his names. About all of the times he had willingly put himself in danger for a collar. And how different that felt from putting himself on the line for his partner.

Kensi slept beside him on the couch and he couldn't bring himself to leave her – rationalized that it was because he didn't have a key to her place and couldn't leave her door unlocked.

In reality it had more to do with the woman nuzzled into his chest like she was meant to fit there.

He brushed his mouth against her hair, giving in to exactly what Callen and Sam had warned him about for just a minute.

"Deeks," she whispered, half asleep still.

He brushed his injured hand through her hair, "Go back to sleep." She burrowed closer into his chest.

"Kay." As she stilled against him, he thought that maybe all the Tims and Sullys and Edwards didn't matter so much after all.


End file.
